This volume examines British and US attitudes towards the means and mechanisms for the facilitation of an Arab-Israeli reconciliation, focusing specifically on the refugee factor in diplomatic initiatives. It explains why Britain and the US were unable to reconcile the local parties to an agreement on the future of the Palestinian refugees.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

Introduction: The Palestinian Refugee Problem as an Impediment to Peace

This is not to say that Zionism as an ideology is unravelling, but more that the current debate in Israel and the Jewish diaspora over its nature reflects these changes in political architecture. And such changes will accelerate after a peace agreement. As Rashid Khalidi points out, a peace agreement will not arrive out of thin air but as part of a dialectical process with Israel, perhaps offering more generous terms resulting in a softening of negative Arab attitudes that in turn will lead to a greater understanding of Israeli security needs and so forth. Of course this dialectic must also be underwritten by an essential component of any agreement: reconciliation. A viable peace agreement between the parties will likely to include clauses detailing a series of reconciliatory steps such as public apologies, a truth commission, commemorations, joint educational programs, and other forms of transnational dialogue. These may erode the high social walls and ideological divide between the protagonists.

Thus, to return to the central question of the impact of changing circumstances, the Palestinian claim for justice needs to be seen in light not only of growing Israeli entitlements but also of the less-than-cataclysmic implications of the demands being made and a dynamic political situation that is broadly leading to greater cooperation and the potential for greater understanding. The Palestinian claim, therefore, can be met if it on one hand is disaggregated, and on the other precipitates a further change in circumstances. A claim that considers the changed nature of the land Palestinian have exiled from, the rights of new generations of Israelis, and the concerns of Israelis to safeguard their Jewish culture, and that devises a series of proposals to respond to these issues, can to some extent square the circle of mutually exclusive Palestinian and Israeli entitlements. At the same time, Israeli Jewish claims based on an exclusivist Zionist ideology will need to be softened in ways in which non-Jews can be embraces so that all Israelis may live and work within a state that is committed to equality and justice for all its citizens.

The Palestinian refugee issue has long been framed in the West as a humanitarian problem to be resolved through a variety of practical measures. These measures include compensation for losses and suffering as well as providing the refugees with a range of options spelled out in the “parameters” circulated by President Bill Clinton just before the end of his term of office and after the Camp David negotiations failed. These options include return to a new Palestinian state; return to “swapped” areas (i.e., areas of present day Israel that would be ceded to the Palestinian state in return for parts of the West Bank now occupied by Israeli settlements); integration in host countries, Jordan and Syria in particular, where refugees already live; resettlement in western countries; and return of limited numbers and categories of refugees to Israel. From a Palestinian perspective, while practical solutions to their displacement are important, the issue is first and foremost a matter of rights, dignity, and international law. Palestinians view their case as in many ways unique, requiring resolution in accordance with their understanding of their rights as spelled out in UN General Assembly resolution 194 and international instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 13.2) and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the colonization of territory under military occupation.

The inordinate focus on a Palestinian state has diverted attention from the fate of the Palestinian people. The conditions of many Palestinians — citizens of Israel, inhabitants of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq — have deteriorated dramatically since 2000. Evictions of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan by messianic religious-nationalist settlers, the expansion of settlements to surround East Jerusalem and prevent its return to Palestinian rule, home demolitions and disruption of normal economic and academic life throughout the West Bank, the siege (tighter or looser as Israel chooses) imposed on the population of the Gaza Strip, attacks on refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, insecure and dysfunctional conditions throughout Iraq — all these have taken a toll on Palestinians. The most urgent task is to focus on the present and future conditions of actual Palestinians, not to speculate on the nature of a state or states that have little chance of coming into existence anytime soon.

This means exposing and resisting Israeli efforts to diminish the Palestinian presence through various mechanisms of expulsion. It means dismantling the separation barrier and other infrastructures that separate Palestinian communities, including the massive checkpoints at Qalandiya and Bethlehem in the West Bank that are effectively international frontier posts, and opposing the continuing confiscation of lands for new settlements and the violent campaign of settler fanatics like the “Hilltop Youth” to terrorize Palestinian farmers and shepherds. It means demanding an end to Israeli occupation of all the lands conquered in 1967. It means advocating the full equality, including individual and collective rights, of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Perhaps most painfully for some, but nonetheless absolutely necessary, it means educating ourselves about and recognizing the full extent of the Palestinian Nakba, whose effects continue today. Resolution of the conflict necessitates that we confront our moral obligations as Jews, as Americans, and as global citizens to acknowledge responsibility, make restitution, and pay compensation.

The Israeli demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian demand that Israelis recognize the Palestinian refugees’ moral right to return express the two peoples’ need to have their respective causes affirmed by the “other side.” Yet, the two causes are irreconcilable as are the core political narratives that give them meaning. The question then arises as to whether an end to the conflict can even be conceptualized, let alone implemented, with the two peoples adhering to their core narratives and expecting affirmation of their respective causes. This paper’s argument is that John Rawls’ later work contains resources that allow for such a conceptualization. An overlapping consensus over a list of common acknowledgments is possible between adherents to the two peoples’ core narratives. In that list, which is proposed in the paper, each of the two peoples can see its cause implicitly affirmed and its need for recognition met, without having to abandon its core narrative or to explicitly grant the demand for recognition made on it by the other side. Thus, the irreconcilability of narratives does not present an insurmountable obstacle to conceptualizing potentially just and stable relations between the two peoples.

In the early post-war years, the DP camps worked toward shaping the “Zionist citizen” before a Zionist state existed. Israeli legislation defining who would and should belong to that new state of Israel considered membership of the Israeli nation as the fulfilment of Jewish history. Israeli citizenship was opened to all Jews worldwide. The concept of non-territory-bound belonging persisted and became trans-territorial. The humanitarian basis for introducing the Law of Return eventually led to a trans-territorial notion of Israeli citizenship for Jews worldwide. In a sense, not statelessness was overcome, but the link between the territorially based nation state and citizenship was erased. From a traditional perspective, the Jewish collective was never defined by territoriality, but by spirituality and ethnicity – which is what the Law of Return expresses. It defines the state of Israel both internally, as a Jewish state, and externally, by its inclusive character for Jews worldwide. If there is an irony to be observed here, it would be that, in many respects, the Law of Return validates the diaspora instead of negating it.

There are many who doubt that the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will lead to a solution, in spite of US secretary of state John Kerry’s efforts and the presumed commitment to peace of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. What has characterized the intractability of the conflict in the past, including the future of Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugees, Israel’s national security concerns, and, in particular, the psychological dimension behind these conflicting issues, still remain in play. That intractability has been further aggravated by a faulty framework for the 2014 negotiations, the absence of leadership, the continued public recrimination of each side toward the other, mutual distrust, and the lack of commitment to reach an agreement that of necessity requires mutually painful concessions. This essay proposes a number of mechanisms and corrective measures that could appreciably enhance the prospect of reaching a peace agreement. Undergirding these proposals is the need for the United States to put its foot down and warn both the Israelis and Palestinians that, unless they negotiate in earnest based on Kerry’s proposed framework, there will be serious consequences resulting from a reassessment of its bilateral relations with both parties.

Abstract

This article discusses the complex interrelations between human rights, memory, forgetting and denial by analysing the discourses and practices of Israeli human rights organisations with respect to the past of the Palestinian people, particularly the events that took place in 1948. It examines how and why Israeli organisations dialectically remember and repress elements of the local past, and align themselves with the prevailing national silencing of the discussion on the Palestinian refugees’ future rights, particularly their right of return. The article concludes by exploring the implications of these practices on the organisations’ capacity to significantly impact the Israeli-Palestinian future.